<div dir="ltr">Hi Kris, <div style>Thanks for the update (and, as always, the continually awesome OS)!</div><div style><br></div><div style>Can you talk a bit more about the decision to include GRUB? Just curious, from a newbie's perspective, of how the inclusion of the GPL'd stuff w/ the BSD-licensed stuff will work, long-term.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Cheers!</div><div style>Bridger</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Kris Moore <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kris@pcbsd.org" target="_blank">kris@pcbsd.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
I wanted to take this time to give you a status update on PC-BSD /<br>
TrueOS, and the direction going forward. As many of you know, we've been<br>
doing builds of 9.1-RELEASE and 9-STABLE as a "Rolling-Release". Our new<br>
plan is to issue system and package updates on the following schedule:<br>
<br>
9.1-RELEASE<br>
- Update PKGNG repo on or about the 1st and 15th of the month.<br>
<br>
9-STABLE<br>
- Update the PKGNG repo on or about the 5th and 20th of the month<br>
- Issue a new "freebsd-update" patch on the 1st, which includes the<br>
latest -STABLE version<br>
<br>
In addition to the rolling release, we also have some other cool new<br>
projects in the works. The first among these is our work to make ZFS the<br>
cornerstone of the PC-BSD/TrueOS experience. This will bring features<br>
such as ZFS "Boot-Environments", including the ability to boot directly<br>
from them at the boot-loader. If you've not run boot-environments<br>
before, you will wonder how you survived without them. To accomplish<br>
this, we are going to be moving to the GRUB boot-loader, which now has<br>
ZFS support. The pbi-manager and Warden already have extensive ZFS<br>
support, and we will be enhancing our other utilities, such as<br>
"Life-Preserver" with ZFS features as well.<br>
<br>
In addition to re-focusing on solely on ZFS as our default file-system,<br>
we have had to take a look at the feasibility of continuing with the<br>
i386 builds. As many of you know, ZFS is a 21st century operating system<br>
and doesn't play nicely with the legacy i386 kernel / versions of<br>
FreeBSD. In addition over the past couple years, more and more of<br>
time-consuming issues we've encountered have been only on i386, partly<br>
due to the fact that most FreeBSD devs have already moved on to 64bit<br>
and also due to the quickly shrinking number of users / systems that<br>
still run i386. In order to make PC-BSD / TrueOS, secure, stable and<br>
timely, we've decided to drop the i386 builds going forward, and instead<br>
focus on a single 64bit architecture. This means the next editions of<br>
rolling-release and 9.2 onward will be 64bit only. If you are already on<br>
64bit, then you won't need to worry about anything. However if you are<br>
running i386 on your box you will need to consider moving it to the<br>
64bit versions in the near future. If your hardware is less than 10<br>
years old then most likely you will be able to do this without any<br>
difficulty.<br>
<br>
For those helping us test the rolling-release now, I hope to have a new<br>
ISO + package set available in the next week or so, which includes the<br>
new GRUB boot-loader for Boot-Environments. I will post back details on<br>
how to manually setup / test this feature in the near future. Once these<br>
new features have stabilized a bit further, we will begin to issue<br>
general updates for users of the old 9.1-RELEASE from January to upgrade<br>
to 9.1 Rolling Release.<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Kris Moore<br>
PC-BSD Software<br>
iXsystems<br>
<br>
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</font></span></blockquote></div><br></div>